This page was
archived from the Weird Wisconsin website, which is currently
down. Until the website returns, this page will be kept as a
snapshot in honor of the excellent work put into it by Richard
Hendricks.

Some Theories

There are many theories about
what the Bray Road Beast is – or was.

Initial reports described the
Beast as essentially wolf-like, with a powerfully built chest, and oddly
shaped rear legs. It was described as larger than a dog, with big teeth
and fangs. It had long claws and pointed ears. At times it was described
as running on two legs.

Lori Endrizzi drew a picture of
the beast, showing an essentially wolfish creature, kneeling. This after
she found a picture of a werewolf in a library book, which nearly made
her eyes pop out of her head. Doristine Gipson also later drew a picture
which resembled a hairy upright werewolf-like creature. Other witnesses
described a scraggly-haired creature, larger than a dog, but thinner
than a German Shepherd. Most noted its "wobbly" or
"slouchy, sloppy-like" manner of walking, as if it were having
locomotive problems. Others described the back legs as being very wide,
only to become very skinny near the feet. Others saw the beast on two
legs, then dropping to four. Some saw it only on four legs, others only
on two. A few described it as kneeling, or sitting up "like a
raccoon sits." The Beast ran after and jumped on cars. Some saw the
Beast, running on two legs, chase down a whitetail deer.

In most of these early cases, the
Beast is five feet or five feet and a half long or tall, depending on
how many legs it was seen standing on. All said the Beast was larger
than a coyote, larger than a dog, and skinnier than a bear with a muzzle
shaped more canine than ursine.

Initial theories talked of a
dog-wolf hybrid, while others countered that it was nothing more than a
deformed coyote or dog. If this creature was seen as a "freak of
nature," it was freakish in the sense of physical deformity rather
than aberration. There are many discrepancies in the descriptions,
enough to cause some to wonder whether there were multiple beasts or
whether the aberrant sightings should be tossed out, ignored.

A majority of the community
thought the whole thing a hoax or a matter of people drinking too much.
Scornfully or jokingly, the creature quickly became known as the
werewolf. As this talk spread, the image of a werewolf, with its
stereotypical connotations of upright wolfish manlike being, seemed to
catch hold of the popular imagination. Yard signs and advertising
depicted this familiar figure out of folklore and movies. The
illustration that accompanies The Sun article is only the most
egregious example of this stereotyping. The werewolf seen on yard signs
or in advertisements is also seen smiling or looking happy, counter to
the ferocious werewolf of folklore and fable, as if the very notion that
a savage terrorizing beast could be found stalking the quiet fields and
sunny pastures of the rural Midwest.

Others in authority countered
that it was nothing more than a black bear, found further south than is
typical. People have never seen one, the reasoning goes, and when they
don't know what they're seeing, their imaginations run wild with
speculation.

Other sightings seem to be that
of a different creature entirely, with descriptions closer to Bigfoot or
an ape-like creature, as seen in the Godfrey and Shackelman stories in
1993. Here the creature is seven or eight feet tall, apelike, with a
strong skunky odor, weighing several hundred pounds. Some of these
sightings are from a time previous to the 1989-1991 Beast sightings, but
others, like the Brichta and Maxwell sightings, are from after the
initial flurry of Beast reports. And what of the creature that uttered
"Gaddarah," then sneered as it stalked away after the
nightwatchman said his prayer?

Multiple entities or variants on
a theme? Real creature or paranormal entity?

Loren Coleman, in the January
2000 issue of Fate magazine, writes about the shunka warak'in.
Coleman says:

In the wilds of the Upper
Midwestern United States lives a frightening-looking, primitive
wolflike beast known to Indians and early Western pioneers. The
Ioway tribe, among others, even has a name for it: shunka
warak'in (carrying-off dogs). Little has been written about his
animal because records of it are relatively rare and the existence
of the well-documented timber wolf has often confused the picture.
Nonetheless, evidence does exist for this new addition to the
cryptozoological menagerie.

The beast is described as
"nearly black and having high shoulders and a back that sloped
downward like a hyena." An Ioway Indian, Lance Foster told Coleman
that "a strange animal called shunka warak'in ... snuck into
camps at night and stole dogs. It was said to look something like a
hyena and cried like a person when they killed it."

According to Mark A. Hall, a
Minneapolis-based researcher, says Coleman, "sightings of
mean-looking wolflike and hyenalike animals have come from Alberta,
Nebraska, Iowa, and Illinois" in recent years.

Could the Bray Road Beast be a
shunka warak'in?

A picture and further details of
the shunka warak'in appears in this issue of Fate magazine, as
well as in Coleman & Jerome Clark's Crytpozoology A to Z: the
Encyclopedia of Loch Monsters, Sasquatch, Chupacabras, and Other
Authentic Mysteries of Nature (New York: Fireside, 1999).

The photo shows a stuffed and
mounted shaggy beast, with a long snout and pointed ears, scraggly, with
oddly shaped legs. From certain angles, it could be said this beast
appears to be standing on two legs, as its chest is prominent and rear
lower than the front.

Todd Roll hints there may be a
Satanic connection between the Bray Road Beast and the mutilated dog
carcasses. Scarlett Sankey in Strange Magazine also brings up
animal mutilations, telling of sightings of a black-cloaked hooded
figure astride a black horse, accompanied by a large black dog, seen
emerging one night from a carcass drop point. Satanic lore is filled
with stories of ritual sacrifices for power and the ability to
shapeshift. Despite the jokes, could the Bray Road Beast really be a
werewolf? Is it a meld of wolf and man?

And what of the Dogman legends of
Michigan, and from around the world? In 1987 animals attacked a cabin in
northern Michigan near the town of Luther. There was considerable damage
to a screen and molding around the door and window. After inspecting
tracks found around the cabin, as well as teeth marks on the molding,
Department of Natural Resources officers concluded that a dog had done
the damage. The story spurred others to come forward with their tales,
including 68 year old Robert Fortney, a Cadillac resident. He said he
had been attacked by five wild dogs in 1937. "The lead dog came
right at my throat; I had to shoot him. The rest of them started to
slink away." The last dog to leave was a giant black animal, which,
before it left, said Fortney, stood on its hind legs and glared at him.
[For those of you playing the Name Game, we offer Fortney as an
exhibit.]

Note the many reports of the Bray
Road Beast behaving similarly.

For other reports of Dogmen, see
David Gordon White, Myths of the Dog-Man, Chicago, IL: The
University of Chicago Press, 1991.

There are countless other
theories, all of which have varying degrees of utility, which run the
gamut from Jungian archetypes to Ultraterrestrial trickster figures to
electromagnetically induced hallucinations. The theories range also from
variations of known real creatures to conjectured creatures to creatures
of long ago to paranormal entities to creatures from the Id. Despite the
sheer number of possibilities, in the end it comes down to a simple
either / or proposition.